At a Glance
Northeastern admits 5.2% of applicants.
What You'll Actually Pay
See what families at different income levels actually pay after aid.
What families actually pay, by income level
After grants and scholarships. Before loans. Public school prices shown at in-state rates.
Source: College Scorecard / IPEDS, 2024-25
Where the Sticker Price Goes
Based on average need-based grant. Actual cost varies by family income — see chart above.
Debt at Graduation
29.6%
receive need-based grant aid
$32,461
average debt at graduation
Northeastern graduates carry an average of $32,461 in debt.
Merit Aid
5,346
students received merit aid
$12,725
average merit award
Getting In
Northeastern admits 5.2% of applicants.
Northeastern University's Early Decision applicants are admitted at more than 11x the rate of Regular Decision applicants — 43% vs 3.8%. Note: ED is binding — you commit to attending if admitted.
SAT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 24% of the class submitted
ACT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 7% of the class submitted
68.8% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What They Value
Academic
Nonacademic
Northeastern University gives essays less weight than many schools — academics drive most admissions decisions here. Demonstrated interest is Considered — showing genuine engagement with this school may help your application.
Student Life
50.7% of Northeastern classes have fewer than 20 students.
Share of undergraduate class sections at each size, from CDS Section I-3. More red = more large lectures.
At Northeastern, 50.7% of your classes will have fewer than 20 students.
Class size data reflects all undergraduate sections including labs, seminars, and lectures. Large research universities often have smaller upper-division and graduate-level sections that improve the overall distribution. First and second-year students typically experience larger classes than these averages suggest.
Source: Common Data Set 2024–25, Section I-3 (class sizes)
16:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus Life
From out of state (freshman class)
61.7%
Live on campus
57%
Men in fraternities
5%
Women in sororities
9%
Who Attends
Racial and ethnic breakdown of enrolled undergraduates, as reported in each school's Common Data Set. "Unknown / Other" includes students who did not report or selected "other."
Northeastern's student body is 40.6% white.
Popular Majors
Will They Graduate?
Graduation rates not reported by these schools' Common Data Sets.
Graduating late means paying for extra semesters. The 6-year rate tells you who eventually finishes — the 4-year rate tells you what it actually costs.
What finishing late actually costs
Based on each school's published cost of attendance. Public school costs shown at in-state rates.
Northeastern
Data pending
Graduation rate data from Common Data Set 2024–25, Fall 2018 cohort (most recent available). 4-year rate = students completing in 4 years or less. 6-year rate = students completing within 6 years.
91%
Overall 6-yr rate
90%
Pell recipient rate
Lower-income students graduate at nearly the same rate as their peers — a sign of strong institutional support.
Freshman Retention
96.9%
96.9% of first-year students return for sophomore year.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Boston.
Northeastern sits on Huntington Avenue between the Fenway and Roxbury, on the Green Line and a walk from the Museum of Fine Arts, Symphony Hall and Fenway Park. The campus is compact and genuinely inside the city rather than beside it, so students treat Boston's hospitals, labs and startups as an extension of it.
Notable Alumni
Gregory Jarvis
NASA payload specialist on the Challenger STS-51-L crew; earned his master's in engineering at Northeastern
Nikesh Arora
CEO of Palo Alto Networks and former president of SoftBank; earned his MBA at Northeastern
Jane Curtin
Original cast member of Saturday Night Live; studied at Northeastern in the late 1960s
Sy Sternberg
Former chairman and CEO of New York Life Insurance; earned his master's in electrical engineering at Northeastern
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
The City
Major city
Boston, MA
Best For
Traditions
Co-op
Northeastern's defining ritual is not a game day but the six-month co-op placement. Students alternate semesters of full-time paid work with semesters of classes, and "where are you on co-op?" is the ordinary way students introduce themselves.
Beanpot
The annual Boston college hockey tournament played at TD Garden each February between Northeastern, Boston University, Boston College and Harvard. Northeastern went 30 years without winning it, which made the streak itself part of the tradition.
Springfest
The end-of-year outdoor concert and carnival on Centennial Common, run by the student activities board and timed to the last week before finals.
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Boston
Cape Cod
1 hour 30 minutesThe standard Boston summer and early-autumn escape, reachable without a car via bus lines from South Station.
The White Mountains, New Hampshire
2 hours 30 minutesHiking and skiing within a day trip; the closest real mountains to campus.
New York City
4 hoursFrequent buses and Amtrak from Back Bay station, a 10-minute walk from campus.
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
Boston Logan International (BOS)
20 minutes from campus
Flies international — you can start a trip abroad from here.
Pro sports nearby
- Boston Red Sox MLB
- Boston Celtics NBA
- Boston Bruins NHL
- New England Patriots NFL
Career Proximity
Northeastern's employer pipeline is the curriculum: co-op placements are arranged through the university, and Boston's hospital, biotech and finance clusters are the local market students rotate into.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- Massachusetts General Hospital
- Fidelity Investments
- Wayfair
- Amazon
- Raytheon
- Boston Children's Hospital
Downtown Boston, 15 minutes by subway
Who Thrives Here
Northeastern admits 5.2% of applicants, and it is a genuinely urban campus — 73 acres in Boston, with 57% of undergraduates living on campus and the rest spread across the city. Greek life is small (about 5% of men and 9% of women), so the social centre of gravity is the city and the co-op cycle rather than a campus row. That cycle is the trade-off families should price in: Northeastern's own filing shows essentially no one finishing in four years, because co-op semesters alternate with classes by design rather than being added on. 91.0% finish within six, and five years is the normal path here rather than a delay. The school meets 100% of demonstrated need, but graduates still carry $32,461 in average debt, so "full need met" and "affordable" are not the same sentence. Anyone set on a traditional four-year arc should weigh that before applying.